The steamer made straight for Sumter. The fort stood like a block of granite in the harbor’s mouth, the sea dashing against the outer walls.
Now the sky was solid lead, washed across with moving clouds. The steamer nudged Fort Sumter’s wharf. The sailors looped the hawsers around the pilings, the sergeant of the guard leaped to the dock and was admitted to the fort. The steamer creaked and groaned against the pilings and Tim leaned on the rail with Greene beside him, looking up at the silent gray walls.
The sergeant walked back along the pier with his head down and his arms swinging at his sides.
As the steamer moved toward Charleston, leaving the silent gun ports in its wake, Tim noticed a flag at the top of the pole inside the fort. It snapped in the stiffening breeze, its colors sharp against the flat, gray sky. I wonder, he thought, how long that flag will fly?
The harbor was dotted with the sails of fishing boats seeking shelter from the coming storm. The city of Charleston was strung across the horizon, her rose-brick and white-walled buildings like spots of color in a child’s painting, her church towers standing high above the piers and parks and the houses that lined the waterfront. Off to the right, masts and spars and a complex of shrouds marked the wharves on the eastern shore of the peninsula.
Greene’s voice barely rose above the thump of the paddle wheels. “Where are they taking us, do you suppose?”
“There’s a jail in Charleston,” Tim said, “and others scattered throughout the South.”
“Are the stories of Rebel prisons true?”
“I’ve never been in a Rebel jail,” Tim said. “There’s always hope of being exchanged. The Confederacy can’t afford to have her soldiers wasting away in Northern prisons.”
Tim watched Greene’s face. “Promise me something, will you, Greene?”